First Impressions

Buna! (Hello!) I've been in Romania for two weeks now, but I hadn't been able to do anything that I signed up for until today. One of the babies at the orphanage potentially has measles, so the government wouldn't let us go in to any parts of it until today. All eight of us were able to go visit two apartments that house the kids that are almost ready to be put in a foster families. Today was also my first chance to visit the children at the hospital. My group got to see 3 and a half kids today! One baby, one has bad burns, another has cerebral palsy (we nicknamed him Caleb), and the fourth had a woman with him and seemed to be doing okay. We played with the first two and helped stimulate Caleb by holding his hands and showing him books. I gave a wooden car to the last boy that we saw. He didn't have much with him and he seemed happy to have it.

The Hospital

It's been hard not knowing when I would be able to visit any of my kids for this long, but I love them already! I am so excited to meet them tomorrow! While we haven't been able to do much here in Iași other than explore, we had the opportunity to travel around Romania a little bit. We took a bus to Brașov, which is where Bran/Dracula's castle is. We visited that castle, Peleș castle, and Râșnov fortress on a tour through the hostel that we stayed at. The hostel is called Kismet Dao, and it was great! Comfortable beds, free breakfast, towels, and sheets, and really friendly staff! AND THEY HAVE A DOG, which was probably my favorite part. Here are some of my favorite pictures from this adventure:

Bran Castle

Inside Bran Castle

The view from Râșnov

Râșnov view

Group picture in Brașov 

The Black Church

Peleș Castle

Rope Street- one of the narrowest streets in Europe!

Thanks for reading! Sorry I haven't writted anything really about how Romania really is, I promise I will in my next post. I've just been so excited to be here and to be able to go to the orphanage tomorrow!

Travel Time

My itinerary for my way to Iasi, Romania was PDX to JFK to Istanbul to Bucharest flying, and then a van to our apartment. It's been really hard to grasp the idea that I'm actually going to be gone for four months. I learned that you can pack a carry-on bag as heavy as a checked bag and still have it fit in an overhead bin. If the line for security is short and quick you only need about 15 minutes to get to the C6 terminal of the Portland airport, giving time to start a blog post and get a Netflix account. Use the eye masks on red-eye flights even if they look ridiculous. Circle the perimeter of the airport to find power outlets. It was a fun 48 hours of traveling.

Some pictures:

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                                                                                                    Bucharest^

Getting Excited!

I leave for Iasi, Romania on January 12th 2017! I will spend four months volunteering in an orphanage (well, "orphanage" because Romania recognizes it as a daycare, even though it's not) and a hospital. I'm going with ILP (International Language Program), which is an organization that sends college aged kids in America and Canada around the world to mostly teach English, but the Romania program is different. There will be seven of us split between two apartments and taking care of the kiddos over there. Most of the kids are disabled, either mentally or physically, and are divided into different rooms at the orphanage by age and how disabled they are. I'm so excited to meet these kids and help them develop!

I've always loved traveling and I have a little bit of "I want to save the world" in me, so this is the perfect opportunity for me. I thought and prayed long and hard whether or not to serve an LDS mission, but discovered that that's not what I need to do right now, so here I am going to Romania. 

No, I don't speak Romanian. I speak English and some French, plus a semester of Latin, so maybe I'll be able to get around without too much help. I've been using Duo-Lingo to learn the basics and I'm planning on taking a Romanian to English dictionary. I'm starting to learn about the culture of Romania and Romanians are very superstitious. I can't sit on the ground, I can't have a window and door open in the same room, and I always have to be all bundled up or else the locals believe that I will become sick or infertile. The little ones can't learn how to crawl on the floor because they could get hypothetically sick, so they learn to crawl on a small mattress. It will definitely be an adventure.